Quality Early Education for All - Fostering creative, entrepreneurial, resilient and capable learners - APO
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MITCHELL REPORT NO. 01/2016 Quality Early Education for All Fostering creative, entrepreneurial, resilient and capable learners APRIL 2016 Megan O’Connell Stacey Fox Bronwyn Hinz Hannah Cole
About the authors
Megan O’Connell
Megan O’Connell is a public policy expert with experience across the early childhood, school and tertiary education sectors. A key
focus of her work leading Mitchell's research program is developing policy to improve transitions across the education continuum.
Stacey Fox
Dr Stacey Fox has worked in research and policy across child, youth and family sectors for a number of years. Stacey has co-
authored significant reports on parent engagement in learning and systems design to support prevention and early intervention,
and has worked in strategic and international social policy, program design and family policy.
Bronwyn Hinz
Bronwyn Hinz recently completed a PhD on education policy reform and federalism, jointly supervised by the School of Social and
Political Sciences and the Melbourne Graduate School of Education. For the past 18 months she has been Vice President of a
community-run public preschool with responsibilities for policy, regulation, staffing and OHS issues.
Hannah Cole
Hannah Cole has public policy experience in the areas of early childhood, schooling and child health and wellbeing. She has
considerable experience working on government-wide policy projects and initiatives designed to improve educational outcomes for
vulnerable learners.
Acknowledgements
A number of individuals provided confidential, invaluable and important feedback on drafts of this paper. In
particular we wish to thank:
Myra Geddes, Goodstart Early Learning
Chris Steel, Early Childhood Australia
Dahle Suggett, PTR Consulting
About the Mitchell Institute
The Mitchell Institute at Victoria University is an independent think tank that works to improve the connection between evidence
and policy reform. The Mitchell Institute promotes the principle that high-quality education, from the early years through to early
adulthood, is fundamental to individual wellbeing and to a prosperous and successful society. We believe in an education system
that is oriented towards the future, creates pathways for individual success, and meets the needs of a globalised economy. The
Mitchell Institute was established in 2013 by Victoria University, Melbourne with foundational investment from the Harold Mitchell
Foundation.
Please cite this report as: O’Connell M, Fox S, Hinz B and Cole H (2016). ‘Quality Early Education for All: Fostering, entrepreneurial,
resilient and capable leaders’, Mitchell Institute policy paper No. 01/2016. Mitchell Institute, Melbourne. Available from:
www.mitchellinstitute.org.au
ii
Table of contents
Executive Summary: Quality Early Education for All ............................................................................ v
Missed Opportunities: The benefit of early education for all ............................................................... 1
Challenges and opportunities ...................................................................................................................2
Recognising achievement and looking forward ........................................................................................4
The Impact of Quality Early Education................................................................................................. 6
Why quality matters .................................................................................................................................7
The foundations for future life and learning ............................................................................................9
Return on investment ...............................................................................................................................9
Early Childhood Education in Australia: Looking back to look forward ............................................... 12
Looking back............................................................................................................................................12
Size of the investment ............................................................................................................................13
The National Quality Framework ............................................................................................................16
A skilled and supported workforce .........................................................................................................20
The current policy environment .............................................................................................................21
In conclusion ...........................................................................................................................................22
How Australia’s children are tracking ................................................................................................ 23
Participation in ECEC services (0-5 year olds) .........................................................................................23
Participation in preschool (4-5 year olds) ...............................................................................................23
Australian Early Development Census ....................................................................................................26
Downstream impacts ..............................................................................................................................31
Supporting increased participation ........................................................................................................32
Quality Early Education for All iiiPriorities for the next five years ........................................................................................................ 39
Accelerating quality and access ..............................................................................................................39
Ensuring equitable access to early education for all children ................................................................40
Ensuring all children receive high-quality early education .....................................................................42
Investment that is proportionate to impact ...........................................................................................44
Conclusion: Priority Recommendations ............................................................................................. 46
Recommendation 1: Universal Access ....................................................................................................47
Recommendation 2: The highest quality for the children with the greatest need ................................47
Recommendation 3: Quality early education for all children.................................................................48
Recommendation 4: A national data strategy and coordinating agency ...............................................48
Recommendation 5: Recognising the importance of early education ...................................................49
Appendix One................................................................................................................................... 50
References ....................................................................................................................................... 53
Quality Early Education for All iv
Executive Summary: Quality Early Education
for All
There is a mismatch between investment and opportunity in early childhood policy in
Australia. The early years are a critical window for building the foundations that enable
all children to become creative, entrepreneurial, resilient and capable learners. Yet
current policy settings are not meeting the needs of the children who stand to benefit
most. This report aims to inform priorities for action for the next five years.
Early education is one of the most significant investments in education and productivity that governments make.
It has positive impacts on all children and is a key strategy for overcoming the impact of early disadvantage on
educational outcomes and life chances.
However, in Australia, there remains an unacceptable divide in both opportunity and outcome between the
poorest and wealthiest communities, between cities and very remote towns, and between children from different
cultural backgrounds.
A third of Australian children do not attend preschool for the number of hours needed to make a difference and
children in poorer communities have fewer high-quality services available to them.
More than one-in-five children start school with vulnerabilities that can make it hard for them to take up the
opportunities that schooling provides.
This has long-term consequences for the future productivity and prosperity of the nation.
We need to act urgently.
Australia does not have a coherent or equitable policy framework and service delivery platform for children and
their families in the early years. The system is complex, fragmented, and unequal access to effective services
further entrenches health, social and economic inequalities.
The early childhood education and care (ECEC) sector is a key element of the early years platform and shares this
complexity. Responsibility for funding and delivery of early education is spread across all levels of government
and there is a lack of robust data to measure impact and target investment decisions.
Advances in boosting participation in early education have been made, and the National Quality Framework
(NQF) provides the foundations for high-quality and more equal ECEC but the pace of change is too slow. Australia
does not yet provide all Australian children with high-quality early education.
Quality Early Education for All vCurrent policy settings are still not extending educational opportunity equally to all children. This means we are
missing out on chances to maximise the potential of all
children to thrive, participate in and contribute to our society.
The growing gap between the most advantaged and least High-quality, developmentally
advantaged children, in both learning and wellbeing, creates
significant challenges for an education system already appropriate early education in
struggling to reduce the gap in achievement. Unequal access the two years prior to school
to early education and difficult transition into primary school
also contributes to increased risks around early must be a core component of
disengagement from school, the incidence of mental health the platforms our nation
issues, substance misuse and involvement in juvenile justice.
invests in to secure the
High-quality, developmentally-appropriate early education in health, wellbeing and
the two years prior to school must be a core component of
national investment to secure the health, wellbeing and education of our children, to
education of our children and to secure positive futures for secure positive futures for
them and for the country.
them and for the country
This report aims to inform priorities for action for the next
five years to ensure that all Australian children can benefit
from a quality early education.
Early education in Australia
The signing of the National Partnership Agreement in 2009 (and commencement of the NQF in 2012) ushered in a
new national approach to the regulation and delivery of high-quality ECEC in Australia. The NQF provides the
foundation and framework for lifting levels of quality across the system. Its core elements – the Early Years
Learning Framework (ELYF) and the National Quality Standard (NQS) – reflect research evidence and a broad
professional consensus about the conditions that create positive relationships and a high-quality learning
environment for children. The EYLF and NQS highlight the fact that children learn through play and in the context
of secure and positive relationships and recognise that the early years are a crucial period for early cognitive and
social and emotional development.
In the past five years, the proportion of children accessing early education has increased and progress has been
made towards achieving higher and more consistent quality across services. This is a strong foundation that can
and must be built on.
Although measurable progress has been made, access and quality are still skewed by socio-economic status,
meaning that we are missing opportunities to extend access to quality early education to the children who stand
to benefit most.
A substantial proportion of services have been independently assessed as working towards the minimum quality
standards outlined in the NQF. The NQF Assessment and Ratings results provide independent confirmation that
quality remains highly variable across the country, although there are indications that the assessment process is
resulting in services improving their quality. A quarter of services have still not been assessed.
Of most concern is that nearly one-in-four services experience difficulty in meeting the NQF’s ‘education program
and practice’ standard which focuses on embedding children’s individual learning, exploration and identity in
everyday practice.
Quality Early Education for All viThere is a clear need for a focused strategy to ensure all services meet the NQS. In particular, it is necessary to
accelerate assessment processes to drive an increase in quality and to embed quality improvement across the
system.
How Australia’s children are tracking
Despite the rapid expansion in provision, access and funding for early education and care in the past decade,
there are cohorts of children who are either not accessing a preschool education, or who are not accessing the
hours of quality early education needed to make difference to their development.
Each year, 15 per cent of the children from the lowest socio-economic quintile and around 60,000 children in total
enter school developmentally vulnerable. Quality early educational opportunities are a vital strategy for reducing
these numbers.
While overall levels of developmental vulnerability have not shifted significantly, these levels have widened
between the poorest and wealthiest communities, and metropolitan cities compared to very remote towns.
Cohorts of children and an unacceptable number of communities fare extremely poorly on the Australian Early
Development Census (AEDC).
Early education must be delivered in a way that, as far as possible, reduces barriers to access for the children who
stand to benefit most. Priorities include shifting family and community perceptions about the importance of early
education and delivery models that prioritise assertive outreach, engagement with families, cultural
appropriateness and additional support for families where needed.
Early education must also be delivered with a level of quality and an intensity that is proportionate to need, which
will require additional investment in the communities the AEDC indicates need more support.
Priorities and recommendations
This report makes five priority recommendations that the Mitchell Institute believes should be key national
objectives for early childhood policy over the next five years.
These overarching recommendations address issues of access, equity, quality and data. They reflect the evidence
about which investments can have the greatest impact and a pragmatic approach to building on existing
achievements.
The Mitchell Institute will explore these issues in more detail in 2016.
Quality Early Education for All viiMitchell Institute Priority Recommendations
1. Establish affordable access to preschool as a legislated entitlement,
make a permanent commitment to funding Universal Access for 4 year
olds, and commence work on extending Universal Access to 3 year olds
2. Scale up evidence-based, high-intensity programs for the most
vulnerable children, prioritising the communities in each state that are
in the bottom decile for developmental vulnerability in the AEDC
3. Ensure the NQF is achieving its objectives and is appropriately
resourced to do so, and that all services are meeting the NQS, at a
minimum, by mid-2017
4. Deliver a national early childhood data strategy that establishes the
information infrastructure needed to drive policy and practice
improvement into the future
5. Commence a national campaign to strengthen family and community
knowledge and beliefs about children’s early learning
6.
Quality Early Education for All viii
Missed Opportunities: The benefit of early
education for all
It is well-established that the early years are a crucial window for fostering positive
health and wellbeing and for establishing the foundations that enable all children to
become creative, entrepreneurial, resilient and capable learners. Yet current policy
settings are not meeting the needs of the children who could benefit most.
Successive reports have identified the need for a coherent policy and service delivery framework that integrates
effective health, learning, wellbeing and parenting support for children, and their families, from birth to school
age (and beyond) delivered with an intensity proportionate to need (Marmot, 2010; Moore, 2008; Moore et al,
2014; Fox et al, 2015).
Despite various attempts to move from rhetoric to practice, and the existence of many pockets of excellent
practice, the service system as a whole remains characterised by fragmentation, inaccessibility, the delivery of
poorly-evidenced interventions, a lack of clarity about what
outcomes are being achieved, and uncertainty about where to
target investment to optimise outcomes (DHS, 2011; Cassells et The service system as a whole
al, 2014; valentine and Hilferty, 2011).
remains characterised by
One of the most significant opportunities to improve practice and
outcomes in early childhood is by expanding access to quality fragmentation, inaccessibility,
early education and better equipping the early education and the delivery of poorly-
care (ECEC) sector to support children’s learning, development
and wellbeing.1 evidenced interventions, a
lack of clarity about what
Children are learning from the moment they are born and
relationships provide the context in which they are supported to outcomes are being achieved,
explore, learn and develop positively (National Scientific Council and uncertainty about where
on the Developing Child, 2004). This report focuses on the role of
early education in the two years prior to entering school, but to target investment to
recognises the importance of children’s learning in their earliest optimise outcomes
years and the crucial role families play as children’s first teachers.
Early education is especially important for the cohort of children
1
A quality early learning experience ideally follows high-quality child and family healthcare, including sustained nurse home
visiting from the antenatal period to age 2 for families who stand to benefit from a more intensive service (Moore et al,
2012), augmented by access to parenting skill development, support to provide a rich home learning environment and early
intervention for emerging language and social and emotional wellbeing issues (Fox et al, 2015).
Quality Early Education for All 1likely to arrive at school developmentally vulnerable.
Australia has made significant advances in the past five years, but issues around ensuring equitable access to
high-quality early education remain a challenge.
The Mitchell Institute is focused on building an education system that is oriented towards the future, creates
pathways for individual success, and meets the needs of a globalised economy. This requires creative,
entrepreneurial, resilient and capable learners. The Mitchell Institute’s landmark 2015 report, ‘Educational
Opportunity in Australia 2015: Who Succeeds and Who Misses Out’, found that many of the children who enter
school developmentally vulnerable fail to catch up, with around 10 per cent remaining behind throughout the
middle years and in their attempts to transition into further education or work (Lamb et al, 2015). Children
experiencing multiple and intersecting forms of adversity are the least likely to catch up. They are also the least
likely to have access to high-quality early education.
In order to achieve more equitable outcomes for children, this report identifies three key issues:
Ensuring access to early education for all children, including systemic implementation of evidence-based
strategies for attracting and retaining the families who currently experience significant barriers to access.
Ensuring all children receive high-quality early education with the ‘dose and intensity’ necessary to make a
difference.
Investment that is proportionate to impact, including the investments needed to achieve equitable outcomes
for disadvantaged children and the ability to measure that impact.
Challenges and opportunities
Early childhood education is a genuinely challenging policy space,
currently caught between shifting community attitudes, a compelling but “Children who start
complex evidence-base and difficult fiscal circumstances. school in good shape
Australia appears to be caught between the perception that early are likely to learn well,
education is primarily a private concern and family responsibility –
because the purpose of ‘child care’ is primarily to help parents get back to they’re likely to
paid work – and the growing recognition of the significant public benefits develop the expertise
that flow from investing in the early years. The recent Productivity
Commission ‘Childcare and Early Childhood Learning Inquiry’ report and skills that will
suggests that because many of the benefits of early education “accrue make them productive
primarily to the child attending ECEC and to their family” it is not
reasonable to expect the governments to fully fund their participation members of the
(PC, 2015, p. 13). More recently the Government’s proposed childcare workforce.”
legislation, Jobs for Families Child Care Package (2015) ties children’s
access to childcare subsidies to their parents’ workforce participation PROFESSOR OBERKLAID
status.
However, it might argued that the benefits of healthcare and school
education also accrue primarily to the individual, although there is widespread recognition of the public benefits
of universal access to health and education and a strong community belief – reinforced by and reflected in
legislation – that children are entitled to health and school education in their own right.
There is clear recognition that public investment in health and education benefits us all. There is also unequivocal
evidence that early childhood education delivers some of the strongest returns on investment of all social
programs (Heckman, 2009; WISPP). Melhuish (2011) asserts that “the benefit arriving from 18 months of pre-
school is similar to that gained from 6 years of primary school”.
Quality Early Education for All 2It is time that quality early education is considered a core entitlement for all Australian children.2
The evidence for what constitutes quality early education is strong: existing information can provide a reliable
compass for action if backed by ongoing measurement, evaluation and mechanisms to support continual quality
improvement. But there are no perfect answers and ‘silver bullet’ solutions. We need to use this evidence and
develop and evaluate Australian-specific solutions to answer the crucial questions around ‘what works’, for whom
and in what circumstances.
High-quality ECEC is a significant lever for improving children’s outcomes – a critical part of the package of inputs
that sets children up to succeed at school and in life – but it is important that it is not seen as the solution for
transformational change.
Bold policy decisions are needed for Australia to address the huge
High-quality universal downstream personal and social costs of missing the opportunity to act
platforms offer the early – when interventions are most effective. Responding to the
consequences of the stark socio-economic differences evident when
best opportunity to children arrive at school is enormously challenging for the education
shift outcomes at the sytem. Recent Grattan Institute data on the impact of disadvantage on
educational attainment highlights the difficulty the current education
population-level and system has in maximising the potential of all children, including the huge
should be the priority gulf in learning between the most highly performing and lowest
performing students (Goss and Sonnerman, 2016). This reinforces the
for investment Mitchell Institute’s findings in ‘Educational Opportunity’ that without
additional support, early disadvantage can continue throughout a child’s
schooling.
One of the core issues plaguing social policy and service delivery in Australia is that of funding and delivery
models that are often incapable of servicing the number of people who need them. In the same way that only
taking half a course of antibiotics will not address the underlying infection, a program with the capacity to work
with 30 children in a community of 1000 children will never shift the outcomes measured by the Australian Early
Development Census (AEDC). This is why AEDC results have not substantially altered since 2012, despite
investments in a range of evidence-based programs. These programs have their place, and should be supported,
but will not deliver the population-level change we need unless they reach the majority of children likely to
benefit from them. Similarly, low to moderate quality early education will not be sufficient to close the gap in
school readiness and subsequent achievement.
High-quality universal platforms offer the best opportunity to shift outcomes at the population-level and should
be the priority for investment.
There is, therefore, a clear and compelling rationale to prioritise establishing early education as a universal
entitlement for all Australian children, ensuring that education is delivered with the intensity and with the quality
needed. We also need to build capacity to track the extent to which it is, in fact, benefitting children.
Australia has begun building the infrastructure needed to achieve genuine Universal Access, but a proactive
approach is needed to ensure that previous landmark reforms are able to achieve their intended outcomes.
2
The International Labour Organization contends that broad acceptance of the idea that early education is a public good is
likely to coincide with its inclusion as part of the school system (ILO, 2012, p. 24).
Quality Early Education for All 3Recognising achievement and looking forward
In 2008 and 2009 the Council of Australian Governments (COAG) made historic commitments to introduce a new
National Quality Framework for ECEC and a new national commitment to ensure that all children can access a
preschool program delivered by a qualified Early Childhood Teacher (ECT) in the year before school.3
The national law underpinning the NQF, passed in 2010, was a significant milestone. It provided, for the first time:
a consistent national approach to ECEC regulation including staff qualifications and ratios, and an outcomes-
based regulatory framework (the NQS);
a new single national curriculum and pedagogy framework (the EYLF);
the development of processes and information infrastructure to support nationally consistent measurement
of some elements of ECEC data (the Assessment and Ratings process);
a shared commitment to the provision of preschool education in the year before school; and
formal recognition that quality early education is important for children’s development, not just parental
workforce participation.
Five years on from these breakthrough reforms, and in the wake of a major inquiry by the Productivity
Commission and new federal legislation, it is timely to reflect on the extent to which the reforms have achieved
their intended purpose and to articulate key areas for policy and practice development over the next five years.
Crucially, it is important to remember that the 2010 reforms simply brought Australia up to international norms
(OECD, 2001). A significant gap remains between international best practice and Australia’s current policy settings
and Australia remains considerably below average for public investment in ECEC (OECD, 2015; Brennan and
Adamson, 2014, p. 8).
The NQS is designed to set national minimum benchmarks for quality, and its Assessment and Ratings process and
Quality Improvement Plan provide a framework for continuous improvement and for services to exceed the
standards. However, 31 per cent of services that have received a rating were assessed as ‘Working Towards’ the
standards. Critically, after five years 26 per cent of services have not even been assessed (ACECQA, 2016). This is
not sufficient to drive continuous improvement in the sector, or to encourage excellence.
The pace of the change initiated by the NQF is too slow. With around 60,000 children arriving at school
developmentally vulnerable each year, we cannot move quickly enough to raise levels of quality to at least
minimum levels, so that all services deliver a quality education for all children.
Funding for the ECEC sector is complex and often opaque. In addition to family contributions (fees and
fundraising), there are three main funding sources: childcare subsidies provided by the Australian Government;
the Universal Access to Preschool National Partnership, and state and local government investment in providing
access to preschool for (some) 3 and 4 year olds.
We can learn from overseas experience. The United Kingdom extended subsidised ECEC to all 3 and 4 years olds
in 2004 and 1998 respectively, and to the 40 per cent most disadvantaged 2 year olds in 2012. However,
evaluation of the United Kingdom’s expansion of free ECEC to all 3 and 4 year olds has not had an impact of the
size expected. It appears that the primary reasons for this are related to the quality of the services provided and
the fact that although all children can benefit from early education, the biggest gains to be made are through
uptake from the most disadvantaged families (Brewer et al, 2014). There are clear lessons here for Australia.
Current policy settings will only yield improvements in population-level outcomes through a concomitant focus on
quality and access.
3
In this report, the term ‘preschool’ is used to refer to an educational program delivered (across settings) in the year before
fulltime schooling.
Quality Early Education for All 4Policy objectives for the next five years
The Mitchell Institute goal is for an education system that equips all young people to be creative, entrepreneurial,
resilient and capable learners. Early childhood education has a pivotal role in developing the building blocks for
learning and wellbeing, and in making sure that children’s capabilities, attributes and talents shape their futures,
not their experiences of disadvantage.
This report aims to inform the ongoing conversation about policy and practice directions for early education in
Australia over the next five years. The report:
provides a synthesis of the evidence around why early childhood education is crucial for all children, and
especially important for vulnerable children;
outlines the expansion of quality early childhood education in Australia over the past decade;
shows who is participating in early childhood education, who is missing out and why;
provides a stocktake of data on how Australian children are faring; and
suggests potential policy levers for driving change and provides recommendations that could be actioned by
all levels of government in Australia to improve access, quality, data and outcomes.
An education system
that equips all young
people to be creative,
entrepreneurial,
resilient and capable
learners
Quality Early Education for All 5
The Impact of Quality Early Education
Quality early education provides a strong foundation for positive life outcomes for
children. It can play a key role in narrowing the gap between advantaged and
disadvantaged children that begins long before a child’s first year of school.
Early education provides children with opportunities to develop critical skills during the years prior to school
(Cloney et al, 2015), and is particularly important for children who have not had the opportunity of exposure to a
rich home learning environment. Numerous studies have shown the impact of quality early education on
children’s social, emotional and learning outcomes (Sylva, 2010; Moore and McDonald, 2013; Warren and
Haisken-DeNew, 2013; Burchinal et al, 2009). There is a growing evidence-base illustrating the impact of early
years interventions on downstream outcomes, such as educational attainment, economic and social participation,
involvement in the criminal justice system and family wellbeing (Manning, Homel and Smith, 2009; Schweirnhard
et al, 2005; Campbell et al, 2012).
Universal provision of quality early childhood education, delivered with greater intensity for the children who
need it most, is a key strategy for changing the trajectories of children and reducing the unsustainable costs of
late intervention (Heckman, 2008; Access Economics, 2009; Allen, 2011; Fox et al, 2015). Intervening early is more
effective and cost-efficient.
All children benefit from access to high-quality early education, especially in the year before school, but children
from disadvantaged backgrounds benefit more (Heckman, 2008; Harrison et al 2012). Available evidence suggests
that 15 hours per week is adequate and appropriate for most children.
The children most at risk of poorer outcomes – those experiencing abuse or neglect or who had experienced
trauma, and children from families experiencing mental health issues, family violence or drug and alcohol abuse –
can benefit significantly from daily access to high-quality early
education and care from a young age, especially when this is combined
with access to family support and therapeutic services as required Universal provision of
(Sylva et al, 2010; Sylva, 2004; Melhuish et al 2006; Burchinal et al,
2009; AIHW, 2015). For children experiencing significant disadvantage,
quality early childhood
access to at least 30 hours of quality early education from age 3 is education, delivered
optimal.
with greater intensity
The impact of quality early education has been highlighted across for the children who
numerous studies.
need it, is a key
AEDC research snapshots show that children who attend preschool strategy for changing
are less likely to be developmentally vulnerable. For example, in
2009 children from advantaged communities who attended a the trajectories of
preschool had less than a one-in-seven chance of being children
developmentallly vulnerable, compared to a nearly one-in-four
chance for children who did not attend preschool. Similarly,
Quality Early Education for All 6children from diasadvantaged backgrounds had a less than 30 per cent chance of being developmentally
vulnerable if they attended preschool, compared to a 40 per cent chance if they did not (Australian
Government, 2014).
The advantage of early education is maintained throughout schooling with the Longitudinal Study of
Australian Children (LSAC) confirming that children who attend preschool score higher on Year 3 NAPLAN
tests, even after controlling for their personal circumstances (Warren and Haisken-DeNew, 2013).
LSAC data shows a correlation between children who participated in preschool and reduced probability of
being rated by their teachers as doing poorly in school, having low maths or literacy levels, and being rated by
their carer as having poor social and emotional development (Biddle & Seth-Purdie 2013). However, they also
found that these impacts would disappear for children with multiple risk factors and concluded that standard
ECEC (in 2008, prior to the implementation of the NQS) was of insufficiently high quality to mitigate the
impacts of disadvantage.
The OECD finds that a lack of pre-primary education increases a young person’s likelihood of performing
poorly in maths, and that a child with no pre-primary education is 1.9 times more likely to perform poorly in
education than a student who has attended more than a year of pre-primary education, after accounting for
other student characteristics (OECD, 2016, p.80).
In 2012, Australian children with a year of pre-primary education scored 27 points more in the Program for
International Student Assessment (PISA) than children who did not attend preschool. This represents an
additional six months of learning (OECD, 2015).
Two years of high-quality ECEC for 15 hours per week gives the same protective effect as having a tertiary-
educated mother (Sylva et al, 2010).
The threshold of 15 hours of high-quality early education per week is well-established in research (Sylva et al,
2004; Loeb et al, 2010), and it appears that highly disadvantaged children can benefit from full-day preschool
(Loeb et al, 2010; Chang and Singh, 2008; Chang, 2012; Boardman 2005; Ontario Ministry of Education, 2013).
Why quality matters
“If ECEC is to deliver the benefits that are claimed for it, it must be provided
in a way that meets rigorous standards of evidence” (Brennan and “Higher levels of social
Adamson, 2014, p. 5). competence and
ECEC must be high quality to have a positive effect on children’s short and lower behavioural
long term outcomes. There is broad consensus on what constitutes quality problems in pre-
in early education. Quality learning environments are made up of:
kindergarten
Process elements shaping the dynamics of daily occurances in childcare
settings, such as:
classrooms are linked
children’s interactions and engagement with caregivers;
to more emotionally
children’s interactions with other children;
supportive teacher-
learning opportunities activities such as language stimulation; and
child interactions in
health and safety measures. centres that achieve
Structural factors that facilitate these interactions and learning activities, higher levels of
such as: quality”
child:adult ratios; HARRISON ET AL 2012
the size of each group of children; and
Quality Early Education for All 7 the formal education and training of caregivers (Vandell & Wolfe, 2000; Ishimine et al, 2009).
Structural elements are more easily measured and have tended to form the basis of quality measures. However,
on their own, they do not work well as a proxy for quality: they enable the enriched educator-child interactions
and attention to learning and development that drive improvement in children’s outcomes but are not outcomes
in themselves. For this reason, the NQF is intended to influence both structural and process elements of quality.
For instance:
Teachers with greater knowledge of early childhood development have been shown to be more
attuned to children’s communication and emotional cues, lower carer-child ratios permit more
responsive interactions and one-on-one interaction, centres with better qualified staff are more likely
to score well on quality rating scales, high quality centres are more likely to result in improved
outcomes for children (ARACY, 2015, p. 8).
Also crucial to quality is the developmental appropriateness of the learning environment (Sylva, 2010),
particularly the use of play-based and inquiry-focused learning activities, with pedagogical practices that support:
play-based activities and routines which allow children to take the lead in their own learning;
support for language and communication (through use of narrative, shared reading, informal conversations,
song and rhymes); and
opportunities to move and be physically active (Mathers et al., 2014 in ARACY 2015).
An overly structured, academic focus in preschool can prevent children from developing the social and emotional
skills they need. Studies show that children can experience stress in environments with a predominant focus on
academic training (Gray, 2015; Lipsey et al, 2015; Carlsson-Paige et al, 2015; Darling-Hammon and Snyder, 1992;
Marcon, 2002). Although more academic approaches result in early achievement gains, especially in literacy, they
can be followed by detrimental outcomes longer term, particularly in
terms of social and emotional wellbeing (Farran and Lipsey, 2015).
Quality early education is play-based, requires positive educator-child
“Children benefit from
relationships and places children’s social and emotional development at higher-quality care
the forefront.
overall in both their
There are significant differences in outcomes depending on the level of language and social
quality care provided. High-quality child care benefits cognitive
development, improves concentration, and fosters better intellectual skills, but larger
development, enhanced vocabularies and greater sociability. In contrast, benefits tend to
poor quality care is associated with deficits in language and cognitive
function for very young children, and has been associated with poorer accrue when quality is
social and emotional development (Productivity Commission, 2014; in the good to high
Sammons et al, 2012a, 2012b; Sylva, 2010; Belsky et al, 2007).
range.”
Children who attend preschool with a preschool teacher who has an
BURCHINAL ET AL 2009
early childhood education degree or diploma perform better in Year 3
NAPLAN testing for reading, numeracy and spelling than children who
did not attend preschool, even when controlling for personal
circumstances (Warren & Haisken De-New, 2013).
Children who attended preschool with a certificate qualified teacher, or a degree-qualified teacher in a field
other than early childhood, did not fare better than children who did not attend preschool (Warren and
Haisken De-New, 2013).
Data from the Effective Preschool, Primary and Secondary Education (EPPSE 3-16) Project study shows that
there is a difference in outcomes at age 16 between very poor and very high-quality preschools, including
Quality Early Education for All 8after adjusting for circumstances. Preschool quality is particularly relevant for children whose mothers were
early school leavers, and for children who have not been exposed to a rich home learning environment
(Taggart et al, 2015).
Burchinal et al (2010) found substantially higher impacts on children’s outcomes in classrooms that were
rated high-quality. For instance, children in classrooms rated highly for ‘instructional support’ scored over
three times higher on expressive language.
Research suggests that children experiencing higher levels of disadvantage benefit most from higher quality early
education, and require a greater level of intensity. Pianta notes: “preschool in the United States narrows the
achievement gap by perhaps only 5 per cent rather than the 30 per cent to 50 per cent that research suggests
might be possible on a large scale if we had high-quality programs” (Pianta et al, 2009, p. 65).
“Programs in low SES areas that include vulnerable children should be model programs of the highest quality”
(Cloney, et al, 2015), but are currently the least likely to be meeting the NQS, particularly in the crucial educative
component.4
The foundations for future life and learning
Quality early childhood education is also vital for building the social and emotional skills that are key to
succeeding at school and employability in the long term. In the recent Skills Outlook 2015: ‘Youth, Skills and
Employability’, the OECD cited a lack of social and emotional skills as a key barrier to employment, including for
low-skill jobs.
The Centre for the Developing Child at Harvard University points to the importance of the early years for
developing these skills, as well as children’s executive functioning, the cognitive and life skills that require working
memory, mental flexibility and self-control. Executive functioning, they suggest, underpins school achievement,
positive behaviours, good health and successful transition to work. Development of executive functioning starts
early:
“The rudimentary signs of these capacities (e.g., focusing, attention) emerge during the first year of
life. By age 3, most children are already using executive function skills in simple ways (e.g.,
remembering and following simple rules). Ages 3-5 show a remarkable burst of improvement in the
proficiency of these skills (e.g., increased impulse control and cognitive flexibility)” (Centre on the
Developing Child, 2016, p. 8).
Given that children develop these skills through “their relationships, the activities they have opportunities to
engage in, and the places in which they live, learn, and play” high-quality early education and care has a crucial
role to play in supporting the development of crucial capabilities for life and learning (CDC, 2016; CDC, 2011).
Return on investment
“It is no longer viable to take ever increasing amounts of taxation from the public to deal with the ever increasing
impact of failing to intervene early” (Allen and Smith, 2008,p. 113).
Governments at all levels have competing priorities, and need to make complex and often challenging fiscal
decisions about where to invest in order to maximise impact.
The strongest, and most frequently cited, return on investment data comes from a handful of intensive programs
from the US, all implemented in the 1970s and 1980s in very specific circumstances (Table 1).
4
Biddle and Seth-Purdie note that quality standards prior to the introduction of the NQS “were not adequate to mitigate
developmental vulnerability and that [long day care], at the time, may have been harmful” (2013, p. i).
Quality Early Education for All 9Table 1: Benefit-cost ratios cited for early education and care programs (return per dollar invested)
Program Benefit to cost ratio
Perry Preschool Program 17 : 1 for participants at 40 year follow up
Abecedarian Program Between 3-4 : 1 at 21 year follow up
Chicago Child-Parent Centres 10 : 1 at 28 year follow up
Source: Fox et al, 2015, p. 45
It is unlikely that Australian interventions will achieve the same impact, given the vast difference in context and
base-level social protection and health systems, but PWC modelling works with the lower ratios and applies a 75
per cent discount and still finds significant positive impacts. Cost-benefit evaluations of system-wide preschool
and early education prorgrams, conducted in 2013 by the Washington Institute for Public Policy (WISPP),
continued to find strong positive returns on investment (WISPP, n.d.; Kay and Pennucci, 2014; Bania, Kay, Aos and
Pennucci, 2014) (Table 2).
In the EPPSE 3-16 study it was found that individuals who attend preschool earn, on average, £27,000 more over
their working lives than those who do not attend preschool, with the largest difference for children with low-
educated mothers attending quality preschool (Taggart et al, 2015, p. 14).
Table 2: WISPP modelling of cost-benefit of preschool and early education
Program name Total Taxpayer Non- Costs Benefits Benefit Chance
benefits benefits taxpayer minus to cost benefits
benefits costs ratio will
exceed
costs
State and district early $37,036 $11,955 $25,081 ($7,130) $29,906 $5.19 93 %
childhood education
programs
Head Start $27,175 $8,864 $18,311 ($8,783) $18,392 $3.09 82 %
Source: WISPP, 2015
PricewaterhouseCoopers Australia (PWC) has modelled a range of impacts associated with the impact of
increased access to quality ECEC:
In 2014, they suggested that children accessing ECEC services that were Meeting or Exceeding the NQS would
yield benefits of up to $10.3 billion by 2050, while engaging children from the lowest income brackets who
currently receive no ECEC would resulting in an additional $13.3 billion by 2050.
In 2016, they modelled the impact of the Australian Government’s proposed legislation and found a net fiscal
saving to the Australian Government of $4.3 billion by 2050, an extra 29,000 workers either joining the
workforce or increasing their hours of employment, and an increase of $7.6 billion in real GDP by 2050.
Quality Early Education for All 10In conclusion
Early education has substantial and sustained impacts on children’s learning, development and wellbeing. It is a
key strategy for mitigating the socio-economic gradient that so strongly influences children’s progress at school
and their trajectories over their lives.
The NQF provides a good foundation to set minimum standards for quality early education – although
implementation of its assessments remains slow and quality is variable, indicating that further work is required to
maximise the impact of this important reform.
High-quality early education must become a core component of contemporary systems for achieving positive
learning and development for Australian children, alongside and of equivalent value to child and family health and
school education.
The benefits of the current investment in the ECEC sector will be muted if higher levels of quality are not
achieved, particularly for the most disadvantaged children.
“The advantages gained from
effective early interventions
are best sustained when they
are followed by continued
high quality learning
experiences ... [and] due to
dynamic complementarity, or
synergy, early investments
must be followed by later
investments if maximum
value is to be realised”
HECKMAN 2008
Quality Early Education for All 11
Early Childhood Education in Australia:
Looking back to look forward
The early education and care reforms that Australia has pursued over the past five years
have had significant impacts, with substantial increases in the proportion of children
accessing early education and progress towards achieving a consistent base-level of
quality for all children. The foundations have been built – but there is more to be done.
This section provides an overview of key recent developments in ECEC policy and delivery in Australia and
identifies opportunities and critical junctures for further development.
Looking back
An historical division of responsibilities for ECEC policy and delivery exists in Australia (Elliot, 2006), which has
resulted in different conceptualisations of the policy problem and of policy goals, and contributed to a highly
fragmented ECEC sector. The sector has different policy instruments, different guiding philosophies and highly
variable quality of services.
The focus of this report is on solutions to assist all children to succeed in education, and as such does not delve
into the complexities of governance, accountability and funding responsibilities. However, Appendix One
highlights the difficulty of navigating the ECEC sector including the impact of the fragmentation of the sector on
levels of fees and funding. Further work is needed to address these complexities.
Historically, state and territory governments have had primary responsibility for schooling and a number of
jurisdictions extended downwards to provide or subsidise optional preschool services, often approaching
preschool from a more formal educational perspective.
In contrast, the Australian Government has had responsibility for national workforce and economic issues, and
began subsidising childcare services as a productivity measure to increase the participation of parents – especially
mothers of young children – in the labour market.
This division persists in the perception that there is, or should be, a separation between ‘education’ and ‘care’ in
early years policy (PC, 2015), but lags behind the explosion of research on early brain development and early
learning of the past 20 years (Shonkoff and Phillips, 2000; McCain, Mustard and Shanker, 2007; OECD, 2007;
NSCDC, 2004a, 2004b, 2010, 2006, 2011,2012; Winter, 2010). This research conclusively establishes the
importance of the first five years of a child’s life for their later outcomes, and makes any division between ‘care’
and ‘education’ redundant.
In the past decade, ECEC in Australia has expanded in terms of demand, supply, expenditure and the breadth and
depth of services provided.
Quality Early Education for All 12 About 43 per cent of Australian children aged 0-5 years old now participate in ECEC in Government-approved
services, up from 36 per cent in 2006;
In March 2015, there were 16,966 Australian Government Child Care Benefit-approved childcare services in
Australia and 273 state and territory government-only funded children care services (PC, 2016).
This growth has largely been driven by the expansion of female workforce participation, but the expansion of
preschool also reflects a growing recognition of the importance of early education as well as explicit cross-
government policy goals.
Size of the investment
Australia’s public and private investment in ECEC has grown significantly, driven primarily by increases in the
number of children in care and an increase in hours (PC, 2015, p. 116).
Combined public funding is projected to increase to $11 billion a year in 2018-19, if proposed legislation is
passed, but $8.5 billion under current arrangements.
The Australian Government’s expenditure in the ECEC sector has increased by over 250 per cent in ten years,
to $7.2 billion in 2014/15.5
State and territory government spending has increased approximately 150 per cent since 2009-2010 to $1.2
billion in 2012/13.6
Average fees for childcare and preschool services have increased by around 50 per cent between 2007 and
2013.
Combined public and private expenditure per child in preschool in Australia is $13,421, among the highest in the
OECD, compared to an average of $10,432 (OECD, 2015, p. 2), converted to AUD. However, Australian public
investment in ECEC as a proportion of GDP remains well below OECD averages, especially in terms of programs
that deliver a strong educational component. The Melbourne Graduate School of Education notes that:
“In international terms Australia is not yet providing sufficient threshold investment in quality early
learning provision: Australian children do not yet have sufficient access to ECEC programs of
internationally comparable quality and duration” (MGSE, 2015, p. 3).
There is a substantial discontinuity between investment in early education and primary and secondary education
(Figure 1). While governments spent an average of AUD$6,100 in 2012-13 on ECEC for every child in formal care
(Productivity Commission, 2015, p. 128), in 2014 the school resourcing standard was a fixed amount of
AUD$9,271 per primary school student and AUD $12,193 per secondary student (Australian Government, 2013a).
Heckman (2008, 2010) suggests that public investment in children should follow the opposite pattern:
frontloading investment from the antenatal period.
5
Eighty seven per cent of Australian Government funding is in payments to families to offset fees, with 7 per cent supporting
the National Partnership Agreements and 6 per cent on quality assurance.
6
State and territory funding goes to a range of regulatory functions, direct provision, capital investment, planning and
capacity building, with significant differences across jurisdictions.
Quality Early Education for All 13Figure 1: Public and private expenditure on pre-primary education as a percentage of GDP in 2012/13
Source: OECD, 2015, p. 328.
The gap between the total cost of early education and government support is met by families, and the high
private costs of early education remain a barrier to access for many families (Brennan, 2012; Brennan and
Adamson, 2014).
There is a strong association between family income and access to early education. Brennan and Adamson show
that:
In families with a combined weekly income of $2,000 or more, 52 per cent of 0-14 year old children regularly
participate in child care, compared to 25 per cent in families earning $800 or less.
Children whose parents’ weekly income exceeds $2,000 are more likely than those earning less than $800 to
use both formal care (18 per cent and 11 per cent respectively) and informal care (24 per cent and 13 per
cent).
Families earning $800-999 per week are the least likely to use either formal or informal child care (2014, p.
21).
This pattern of access continues, with more recent Australian Bureau of
Statistics (ABS) data showing a sharp discrepancy between access to “For children in low-
ECEC across income brackets (Table 3). income families,
access to early
childhood education
will only become a
reality if services are
offered at no, or
minimal, cost”
DEBORAH BRENNAN, 2012
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